May 19, 2007

Mystery of The Korea Fantasy

To archive denuclearizing of North Korea, it is important to express stronger political will, such as:

Resignation of Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill

Activation of the sanction committee of the UN Security Council Resolution 1718

Deployment of two U.S. Aircraft carriers near Japan

This is not coming from some jerks like me.

This is from Nikkei article on May 13th issue. It caught my eyes because it was unusual for Nikkei which is an economic newspaper and generally considered to be a somewhat leftist or liberal newspaper in Japan.

The author argues the success of the Japan-DPRK summit of Sept 2002 and return of some of the abductees largely owes “axis of evil” statement from the President Bush’s State of the Union address of 2002. He concludes that you need to show off the power in order to negotiate with DRPK.

The title of the column is “Mystery of The Korea Fantasy” which was taken from the book “The China-Fantasy“.

From the Amazon book review:

Mann poses a third scenario and asks, What will happen if Chinese capitalism continues to evolve and expand but the government fails to liberalize? What then and why should this third scenario matter to Americans? Mann explores this alternate possibility and in this must-read book for anyone interested in international politicsoffers a startling vision of our future with China that will have a profound impact for decades to come.

The Korean Fantasy is much more dangerous, he says. “Many know it, but nobody expresses it publicly because you don’t wanna be considered to be one of those neo-cones”.

Wow. Straight up.

[update]

Chosun Ilbo today has similar article [in Japanese] which interviews a Japanese diplomat.